The Unknown Orson Welles: The Merchant of Venice (1969) and King Lear (1985)

Thursday, November 19, 2015,
6:30 p.m.

The Museum of Modern Art

Shakespeare was a source of endless fascination and material for Orson Welles, who experimented with and popularized the plays in books, record albums, radio dramas, stage productions, films, and television broadcasts. In this illustrated lecture, Munich Filmmuseum director Stefan Droessler presents rare documents, photographs, and film fragments from Welles’s lesser-known Shakespeare adaptations, including—for the first time in the United States—the newly reconstructed film version of his unfinished The Merchant of Venice, shot in 1969 in Venice, Asolo, Rome, and Trogir, as well as his last major Shakespeare project, King Lear. Rounding out this unique and exciting program are film clips documenting Welles’s theatrical adaptations of Shakespeare. Courtesy of Oja Kodar. Program approx. 120 min.